She opened the door and stood listening and crying. At the end of the squalid street the trams jangled by along Commercial Road, bringing men and women home from work. “They’ll be all right if they come by tram,” said Eddy. “There’s all up Jamaica Street to walk after they get out,” she wailed. Eddy went down the street and met them at the corner, a small man and two big boys, slouching along the dark street, Fred Webb and his sons, Sid and Perce. He had known them well last year at Datcherd’s club; they were uncompromising individualists, and liberty was their watchword. They loathed the Union like poison. Fred Webb said that there had been a bit of a row down at the docks, which had kept them. “There was Ben Tillett speaking, stirring them up all. They began hustling about a bit--but we got clear. The missus wants me to come out, but I’m not having any.” “Come out with that lot!” Sid added, in a rather unsteady voice. “I’d see them all damned first. _You_ wouldn’t say we ought to come out, Mr. Oliver, would you?” Eddy said, “Well, not just now, of course. In a general way, I suppose there’s some sense in it.” “Sense!” growled Webb. “Don’t you go talking to my boys like that, sir, if you please. You’re not going to come out, Sid, so you needn’t think about it. Good night, Mr. Oliver.” Eddy, dismissed, went to see another Docks family he knew, and heard how the strike was being indefinitely dragged out and its success jeopardised by the blacklegs, who thought only for themselves. “I hate a man not to have public spirit. The mean skunks. They’d let all the rest go to the devil just to get their own few shillings regular through the bad times.” “They’ve a right to judge for themselves, I suppose,” said Eddy, and added a question as to the powers of the decent men to prevent intimidation and violence. The man looked at him askance. “Ain’t no ’timidation or violence, as I know of. ‘Course they say so; they’ll say anything. Whenever a man gets damaged in a private quarrel they blame it on the Union chaps now. It’s their opportunity. Pack o’ liars, they are. ‘Course a man may get hurt in a row sometimes; you can’t help rows; but that’s six of one and ’alf a dozen of the other, and it’s usually the blacklegs as begin it. We only picket them, quite peaceful.... Judge for themselves, did you say? No, dang them; that’s just what no man’s a right to do. It’s selfish; that’s what it is.... I’ve no patience with these ’ere individualists.” Discovering that Eddy had, he shut up sullenly and suspiciously, and ceased to regard him as a friend, so Eddy left him. On the whole, it had not been a cheery evening. He told Arnold about it when he got home. “There’s such a frightful lot to be said on both sides,” he added.